In music, it’s the most wonderful time of year

CeeLo Green’s CeeLo’s Magic Moment is free of f-bombs and loaded up with tons of organic soul.

COMING UP WITH a new tune for Christmas must be the hardest job imaginable for even the most seasoned songwriter.

It’s such a specific thing to craft a lyric for, and every aspect of the holiday has been covered.

You could always cheat it a bit by coming up with yet another variation on Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, maybe Jingles the Dyslexic Elf will tickle someone’s fancy, or Winter Wonderland. Has Snowbound Paradise been written yet? If some struggling Irving Berlin wants it, they can have it.

It probably doesn’t help hearing stories about how Mel Torme and Bob Wells wrote The Christmas Song in 40 minutes simply by writing down wintry thoughts like “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” and “Jack Frost nipping at your nose.”

But it resulted in a song regarded as the most-played holiday favourite of all time, so you can’t argue with the method, and it sounds suspiciously like the game plan employed by Jimmy Rankin and songwriting partner Patricia Conroy on the title track to the former’s first Christmas album, Tinsel Town (Song Dog/Fontana North).

With a perfect title to start with, it still works, as a couple out for a winter walk spies kids making snow angels, carollers and sparkling lights, set to a moody shuffle and a feeling of quiet contentment. It’s one of four Rankin-Conroy originals on Tinsel Town, amid familiar seasonal tunes like Winter Wonderland and Silver Bells; December is a sweet personalized love song to the 12th month and Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye to Christmas has fun with extolling the joys of watching A Charlie Brown Christmas and drinking spiked eggnog well into January.

Things get a bit popcorn ball with Boogie Woogie Christmas, which probably works best as a live tune, but it’s nice to hear Rankin resurrect Steve Weisberg’s gentle Christmas for Cowboys, best known from John Denver’s 1975 album Rocky Mountain Christmas.

What’s missing is one of Rankin’s classic story songs, like Tripper or the Rankin Family’s Mull River Shuffle; I’d take a personal recollection of a family gathering in Mabou over the umpteenth rendition of Jingle Bell Rock and/or Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree any day, but as far as being festive and upbeat goes, Tinsel Town is still a gift worth keeping.

Newfoundland’s Ennis Sisters already know what it takes to make a great holiday album; their 1998 release Christmas on Ennis Road became a perennial East Coast favourite and earned them a CBC-TV special. Fourteen years later the trio of Maureen, Karen and Teresa Ennis reunites for It’s Christmas (Ennis Music), and the result is a traditional treat that makes the most of combining their intuitive harmonies with simple arrangements on a selection of 12 songs that avoids revisiting the usual well-worn chestnuts.

The best-known tune will be Ryan’s Fancy’s A Children’s Winter, but I think there’s a law in Newfoundland that you can’t make a Christmas album without it, and I don’t think anyone’s going to begrudge the Ennises their gorgeous rendition of this personal favourite. Besides, Maureen and partner Mark Murphy do sterling work with their four originals, especially the Celtic two-step Harbour Lights and the childlike enthusiasm of Coming Down the Chimney, with the sisters channelling their inner 10-year-olds with gleeful abandon.

Sibling revelry is also in full effect on Sons of Maxwell’s Christmas Super Deluxe (Sons of Maxwell), the first new album from Dave and Don Carroll since 2004’s Sunday Morning, and their second holiday release after 2001’s Instant Christmas. Of course Dave Carroll has been busy this year, writing a book about his United Breaks Guitars adventures and putting out a fine second collection of solo tunes, Raincoat in Vegas, but it’s great to hear the brothers back together on this collection, wrapped up in a snazzy retro depiction of a swinging Xmas bash.

Most of Christmas Super Deluxe is made up of tried-and-true titles, but the Sons have fun with their arrangements, putting a power-pop spin on Deck the Halls and Joy to the World, and going back to the Jim Reeves album for a Tex-Mex revival of Senor Santa Claus. There’s also a trinity of nativity carols, with Dave’s own gospel shouter Jesus Christ Is Born Today, the calypso Mary’s Boy Child and a folk spiritual, Mary Had a Baby, that inject the reason for the season with some rich brotherly harmonies, while still maintaining the record’s upbeat party mood.

Those first three releases are pretty much friends-and-family affairs, something to play when you’re gathered around the tree or the punch bowl, but Hamilton siren Diana Panton goes for that curled-up-by-the-fire (or video yule log, now in high-definition) vibe on Christmas Kiss (eOne Entertainment).

Keeping things soft and sultry, Panton bridges the gap between Christmas and Valentine’s Day with the most romantic holiday songs she can muster. With a purr as smooth as whipped egg nog, Panton makes Christmas Kiss a sprig of audio mistletoe, backed by the light touch of a jazz trio of trumpeter Guido Basso, guitarist Reg Schwager and Don Thompson on bass, piano and vibraphone.

Internationally, the biggest deal this Christmas is an unexpected holiday disc from Gnarls Barkley front man and the singer of Forget You (yes, I know the song’s original title, but this is a family newspaper), CeeLo Green’s CeeLo’s Magic Moment (Elektra).

Free of f-bombs, the record is loaded up like Santa’s sleigh with tons of organic soul bursting from Green’s impressive pipes on Stevie Wonder’s What Christmas Means to Me and Chuck Berry’s Run Rudolph Run. For me though, the best moment comes when he dials it down a few notches for a killer version of Joni Mitchell’s River, with the Muppets injecting a bit of Mah Na Mah Na into All I Need of Love coming a close second.